Profile
Mariana began painting her beloved horses from the countryside in Uruguay, when she was a young girl.
The first formal training was with her father. He was painter Jose Luis Montes and was a professor from the “Taller Torres Garcia”. The “Taller Torres Garcia” is the renowned Constructivist School founded in Uruguay by the Latin American Master Joaquin Torres Garcia. Montes-Shaw grew up in an artistic environment.
During the late seventies-early eighties, Mariana practiced naturalistic work: portraits, figure and bouquets. This learnings have been the root for the future abstract expression. And as her masters used to say, naturalism must be abstract. There is no art without abstraction. Later, Mariana attended the Guillermo Fernandez studio. From his deep knowledge of modern art he taught Montes-Shaw ways to bring out her inside world. During the eighties Montes-Shaw attended Medical School. She became a Psychiatrist and has always been deeply attracted to the labyrinthine world of the human mind. Ever since, Mariana has dedicated her life to her two passions: psychiatry and art.
In 2000 she moved to the US, where she has deepened the exploration in ‘the inner symbolic world’, where signs and symbols intertwine with reality. Or, better yet, where the symbolic world expresses the reality.
